In the 2000s wasn't everything just misused/abused table layouts? Maybe we frequented different places, but that's how I remember it.

It worked for the most part.

It became feasible to switch to CSS layouts for complex websites and apps in the early 00s. How early depended upon your target demographics and skill set. Lots of people who didn’t want to learn new ways of doing things carried on using table layouts long after browser support demanded it. I was using CSS sparingly from 1999 onwards and ditched table layouts in 2002, but I was ahead of the curve.